The present invention is concerned with special vehicle seats. Heretofore, each vehicle car seat was a small removable seat generally equipped with a restraining device or harness and can be fastened to the seat of a vehicle for securing a person in the vehicle. Most often it is a seat that is portable for use in the automobile and fastens onto a car's built-in seat and is used for securing a small child in a car's regular seating position. The seat is removable and is designed to hold the small child safely while riding in the automobile and attaches to a standard seat with hooks or straps and detaches from the standard seat by unhooking the hooks and straps. As referred to herein, the term ‘car seat’ includes a ‘car booster seat’, generally used for a child who has outgrown both an infant car seat and a toddler car seat and lifts the child by several inches. As with an infant car seat, a booster seat is placed on a vehicle adult seat and is designed to restrain the child in the booster seat employing the built-in adult seat belt of the vehicle. A booster seat is generally recommended for children from 40 to 80 pounds. Many booster seats are designed without a back and the child seated on it is lifted by several inches and restrained employing an adult built-in seat belt.
Herein, a person using and/or needing a car seat is referred to as a car seat user. Also, although reference is made to infants, toddlers and/or children, this invention is applicable to any car seat user that uses and/or needs a car seat when traveling in a land, sea or air vehicle. Thus the term ‘car seat’ is used for a removable vehicle seat generally equipped with a restraining device or harness and can be fastened to the seat of a vehicle for securing a person in the vehicle.
It is noted that when seating is required for a plurality of car seat users, a separate car seat is needed for each car seat user. Thus each car seat user uses up a separate regular seat built into the vehicle. Thus a family or group including a plurality of children and/or other car seat users is limited in seating capacity by the adult seating capacity of the vehicle being used. This limitation manifests itself as a serious problem for large families and/or groups that find it difficult to meet children car seat needs for all their children or to meet the needs of car seat users of the group. These families must either not meet car seating requirements or leave one or more children out of the vehicle. It would be advantageous to find a way to better utilize the adult seating capacity in a vehicle to provide more seating for persons in car seats than is provided by the vehicle's adult seating capacity. Besides cars, this may be particularly useful in vans, buses or other land, water or air vehicles.